Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

volume introductionMaharishi Effect on success and support for the executive branch ofGovernment in the areas of U.S. Presidential approval ratings, mediapositivity toward the U.S. President, and changes in the quality of lifein the Washington, D.C. area during a National Demonstration Projectin Washington, D.C. when a group reaching 4,000 practiced theTranscendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program during the summerof 1993.An overview of Criminal Rehabilitation, by Drs. Michael Dillbeck andAllan Abrams which summarizes the results of the major prison rehabilitationprograms that have employed the Transcendental Meditationtechnique. Variables studied include decreased anxiety; decreasedrule infractions; increased ego-development, moral reasoning, andself-actualization; decreased drug abuse; and decreased recidivism. Atable in the paper documents the study, design, sample size, measuresemployed, and effect size for each result.In the Research on Education section, Drs. Sanford I. Nidich,Randi J. Nidich, and Ron Zigler present an overview of educationalstudies on the Transcendental Meditaiton program in middle and secondaryschools. The paper includes, among several studies discussed,research on the efficacy of the Transcendental Meditation techniquein middle school students in increasing academic achievement as measuredby English and Math scores. A study was also conducted on 12thgraders with results indicating an improved graduation rate, and anextremely low dropout rate (2.9%) of the 142 students practicing theTranscendental Meditation program in that study. The authors discussthese and other results in terms of increased integrated brain functioningand higher EEG coherence through practice of the TranscendentalMeditation program.In the section on Health Care Benefits and Cost Reduction, Dr.David Orme-Johnson compares five years of medical insurance utilizationstatistics of approximately 2,000 regular practitioners of theTranscendental Meditation program with a normative data base ofapproximately 600,000 members of the same insurance carrier. Hefound that even though the benefits, deductible, coinsurance terms, anddistribution by gender of the Transcendental Meditation group weresimilar to the norm, nonetheless it had lower medical utilization ratesin all categories. Furthermore, when compared with five other health17